English Learning Area for Years 9-10 PLD is designed to strengthen teachers’ confidence and capability in delivering high quality English instruction.  

The aim of this PLD is to: 

1. Help teachers deepen their curriculum knowledge by clarifying expectations for Years 9-10 through evidence informed practice informed practice  
2. Enhance teachers’ planning skills by supporting the design of learning sequences that connect reading, writing, and oral language in purposeful and coherent ways.  
3. Develop specialised ways of learning by close reading, interpretation, critical thinking, and crafting both written and oral responses.  
4. Ensure ākonga develop deep literacy, language, and analytical skills needed to engage with increasingly complex texts across the curriculum.  
5. Develop importance of engaging students with diverse, culturally sustaining texts. 

Through this PLD, teachers will leave with practical tools, collaboratively developed resources, and greater confidence to support Year 9–10 ākonga to thrive in English.

This PLD is available to teachers working in Phase 4 of the curriculum in State and State Integrated Schools. 

Heads of department, senior leadership and staff involved in English are welcome to attend. However, the primary focus of this PLD is for teachers of Year 9 and 10 students, including those who teach English alongside another subject specialisation. 

Teacher Release Day Funding 

Teacher release funding will be provided for workshop attendees. This contribution will be made directly to schools by the end of the term following the workshop. 

Note: TRD funding applies only to participants of the workshop. 

The English Learning Area for Years 9-10 PLD is organised into two in-depth workshops that build teacher capability in a progressive and connected way. Each workshop blends theory, modelling, practical strategies, and opportunities for collaboration so that kaiako can confidently apply new learning in their classrooms. 

In-depth workshops will help build teacher capability in a progressive and connected way. Each workshop blends theory, modelling, practical strategies, and opportunities for collaboration. 

Workshop 1 – Language Studies: Crafting texts (Years 9-10)This full one-day workshop will encompass the following sessions: 

Session one: 

 Foundations of Crafting Texts 

This is built around clarifying changes in writing expectations (Years 7-8 to 9-10), emphasizing writing as designed meaning, unpacking text forms and modes and highlighting explicit instruction and modelling to reduce cognitive load. 

Session two: 

Sentence, Paragraph and Whole-Text Control 

This will outline developing sentence fluency/ syntactic variety and precision, strengthening paragraph cohesion and structuring sustained text effectively. 

Session three: 

Authorial Choices, Voice and Teaching Sequences 

The content covered will include teaching tone, register, voice and vocabulary choice, using mentor texts to teach transferable craft moves and designing short writing sequences that build control over time. 

Workshop 2 – Critical Analysis and Response: Text Studies (Years 9-10) 

This full one-day workshop will encompass the following sessions: 

Session one: 

What Counts as Critical Analysis in Phase 4 

This is built to outline the move from comprehension to interpretation to critical analysis, distinguish summary, opinion and analysis and using evidence to justify interpretations and introducing shared analytical metalanguage. 

Session two: 

Teaching Interpretation, Context and Perspective 

The content covered will include teaching ideas, themes and author’s purpose, exploring language and structural choices as meaning-making tools, addressing historical/cultural/social context and examining representation, perspective and positioning (including media texts). 

Session three: 

Designing Rich Critical Responses 

This will outline providing oral, written and multimodal response options, Scaffolding extended responses to reduce cognitive overload, aligning tasks towards senior expectations and using success criteria and examples effectively. 

Webinars: 

1. Unpacking the Text Specifications 
2. Structuring an English lesson 
3. Unpacking specific text forms  
4. Oral Communication
5. Media and Digital Awareness 
6. Accelerative teaching approaches 
7. Assessment for learning